The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
by psychedelicavenger
Summary: You could say it was fate, but fate is just a term used by the eternally frightened and the incredibly lazy as an excuse not to make your own way. Now that I'm here I aim to alter history according to a few simple rules: Never give anything away for free. Never give more than you have. Always take everything back if you can.
1. Unexpected Delight

_if you are not looking for mental stimulation, turn on your tv and dont look back._

_if you are looking for smut, you should stick around because there will be massive amounts of sleaze to come._

_this brainchild of mine came from my desire to know what it would be like to be sent back in time, as realistically as possible. i wanted to explore the extent of that alternate reality and maybe learn something about myself in the process. as it turns out, i didn't. also because most – most, not all - of the time travel insert fics i have read here are self-indulgent and choppy with very little emphasis on character interaction and realism which irks me because i believe that this is an underplayed idea that deserves recognition. reading them makes me ask myself "what would i do?" and this is the end result._

_this will be an ongoing character study of cutler beckett and his pre-napoleonic era napoleon complex. there will be a few naked encounters with cap'n jack and theodore groves as well as one or two characters of my own creation and a few historical personalities, a healthy splash of stalking from mr mercer, and much later on some romance involving mr beckett. this tale will cover the last steps in mr beckett's rise to capital power and his reign in the caribbean. the movie franchise does not exist._

_leigh the protagonist is a drug abuser (formerly opiates, presently alcohol) and a walking existential crisis. the information she has at her disposal does not come from wikipedia. everything she knows, i know, and i refuse to do any extra research because as i said before, i set out to make this realistic. i have taken a few creative liberties, but no one will invent the atomic bomb._

_leigh the protagonist is a byproduct of my imagination that i am using to entertain myself, and hopefully you too. i hesitate to call her an anti-hero but she is selfish and manipulative and she will be doing some very bad things as well as some very good things, namely challenging long accepted ideas for shits and giggles. and if you had a more comprehensive education than anyone else in the world at the time, why wouldn't you? this story will dabble in philosophy, literature, and just about every ism __you can think of, and it all fits in with the plot. i will also be feeding myself to temptation because of the hyper-decadence associated with rococo style. lavish parties, outfits, foods, champagne for breakfast, and wine for everything else, exotic pets, and gossips that make petty high school attention whores look like nuns. a completely unthinkable lifestyle._

_could you even imagine the kind of change a twenty-first century woman would have to adjust to, and if you are a feminist like myself, being up to your tits in misogyny? let me end by saying that if i were to be sent back in time and were able to bring one thing with me, it would be a flamethrower. it might as well be the zombie apocalypse._

_the reason this introduction is so long is because this story is also very long and you and i both know i'm not going to to this for every chapter. i'd rather get it out of the way. i just hope i haven't scared you off so quickly._

_DISCLAIMER HERE IT COMES OH SHI- _**I own nothing. Neither do you.**

**Flying Lotus - Unexpected Delight ft. Laura Darlington**

_March 6th 2012_

"_Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please fasten your seat belts as we are entering a patch of turbulence. We should be clear in about fifteen minutes as we pass above the storm. Thank you for your cooperation_." The intercom clicks and is soon followed by a hundred obedient buckles. The plane rocks gently, but the flight attendants are still making their rounds. I ask for a vodka and coke.

My scalp is itching mercilessly, and after inspecting underneath my acrylic nails I find sand. It's never going to come out. Sipping at my drink, I race raindrops on the window, like we all did as kids and the lucky few still find joy in as adults. Lauren yanks one of the ear phones from its place to catch my attention. "You awake?"

"Yeah." We left the ground at about eleven at night, it's now four.

"Oh. Because you haven't moved in a few minutes," she notes with an awkward laugh.

"I'm just thinking about going home. I can't remember if I sent my rent cheque before I left."

"That's why I go post-dated. But I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Yeah you're right. In any case I need to look over my theatre notes at least once before the exam." Lauren and I have only recently rekindled our friendship over reading week by surfing in Australia. For all you philistines out there, reading week is the white bread Canadian spring break.

"Theatre notes? Theatre is the one subject where it's entirely unnecessary to study. Improvising is your final. I have to study pre-renaissance religious art. There is nothing more tedious than that when you love the Russian avant-garde. Nothing."

"The extent of your exam: find the red triangle. The extent of my exam? Show the gestus of classism as depicted by Brecht. Impersonate an onion. Show the life cycle of a balloon through 'pataphysics. _Fuck _your pretty colours."

The plane shivers, jarring me. "How much do you want to bet that's not turbulence?" Lauren wonders loudly with a wicked grin, deliberately turning heads in subtle word of mouth to spread living anxiety into these people's quiet lives.

I'm not too thrilled. "Not much, you know there's nothing but turbulence in a plane."

"Alright, new bet. Ten says we're going to fall out of the sky and crash."

"I see you and raise you five the oxygen masks don't work."

"You're on."

The intercom gives an unsettling crackle. My ears pop so I try to force a yawn. Lauren stretches her jaw as well, trying to relieve the same pressure that is spreading through the cabin.

"Do you feel that too?" I don't know who said that.

The noise of shrieking metal and fire bursts forth through the cabin, pressure dropping rapidly. I don't know from which direction the disaster is coming at us, I can't move my head to see.

No such thing as gravity anymore, it appears to have been reversed, everybody straining unwillingly against their safety buckles; some kind of cruel joke that falling forces our bodies upwards, in the opposite direction of where we're headed at terminal velocity. I start grasping for Lauren's hand, and when I find it we lock eyes with grim understanding.

I shout over the din and panic, "I DIDN'T THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN SO SOON." My guts are clogged in my throat at the loss of pressure, making it hard to breathe.

Lauren smiles with such sadness. "WE JYNXED IT. I LOVE YOU, LEIGH!"

"I LOVE YOU TOO." We hold each other in a desperate embrace, knowing we won't ever see each other again. "SHOULD I PAY YOU NOW OR LATER?" The oxygen masks have deployed. I just can't win today.

"THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW."

"I'M HAPPY I CAN DIE WITH YOU."

"I COMPLETELY AGREE. I SUPPOSE I'LL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE." Shut your eyes and go there, and I'll meet you on the other side. I don't know if I heard that somewhere or if I made it up. It doesn't matter now.

"WHATEVER THAT IS."

"THIS IS TAKING A LONG TIME!" This is the last thing she yells into my ear and I can't help but laugh before a thunderous nothingness exploded through my being.

It all happened so fast. I only had time to blink before realizing where I am.

Where I am is in the ocean, surrounded by... nothing but ocean. No debris, no sign of other life. I open my eyes to the brightest sun I've ever seen and immediately shut them. Floating on low waves and surrounded by nothing but water, no land for miles. I have no idea how long it's been since the crash, I don't even know if time exists at this point.

My eyelids rebel several times and learn the same lesson over and over again. Hungry and alone, I shout for Lauren but I've swallowed a lot of sea water and my throat burns viciously, petrifying my tongue. I lay back into the waves and shut my eyes to the world, floating without intention.

Not in pain, not unbearably cold. I'm very content to float here. There's no debris to tell of a crash, no bodies to speak of a violent crash, as I am sure I was just in. I guess that I'm on the other side. But how pointless it is. What is there to learn in the middle of the ocean?

Is this the punishment for my ridiculous life, where I once estranged the person I died with and now I want nothing more than to find her from my post in nowhere? I am sorry Lauren. It can't be said enough.

The tears that illuminate my vision magnify the horrid sun, so I shut my eyes and cry to fill the ocean enough to drown myself.

A million uncountable moments later I begin hearing voices.

"MAN OVERBOARD!" A chorus of yelling follows this proclamation; a monstrous wooden ship blocks the worst of the glaring sun, obtuse British flag flying.

"This is gonna confuse me to no end," I mutter painfully as a uniformed man clambers down a rope ladder to hoist me over his shoulder with little complaint from myself. He lays me down gently on the deck with a hollow thump and I am immediately surrounded by curious bodies.

"It's a woman..."

"Is she alright?" In my half-dreaming state I feel about ten or twelve people, probably all men surrounding me.

"Doesn't look like she's hurt, mate." They're in some innocent awe, as if I'm some fallen creature.

"What the bloody hell s'a woman doing this far out at sea?"

"I crashed..." I manage weakly before my consciousness starts to give. The sun is hot on my wet skin, soothing me into warm comfort. The salt sea air seems too warm to be the Atlantic ocean, but then again what do I know? The first thought that strikes me into action is the urge to get out of my wet jeans. But as soon as I roll over to my side an alarm is raised.

"Bring her to Mr Beckett's cabin. Bring water," a commanding voice orders. I'm thankful for the mere mention of water, my head lolls back unimpressively.

"She's fainted, get the smelling salts."

"No smelling salts!" I whine as loudly as I can manage. "Just water. Please." The ship is ancient, but painted like new in gold and black. A man holding my arm over his shoulders leads me inside the ship. All the men in my field of vision are dressed drably and don't seem to have a standardized uniform, which is strange. Assuming this is a military ship, firstly they are _scarily _outdated and secondly, (judging from the British accents) one would think the British were slightly more uniform in every respect; these men look like they were just picked up off the street. Some of them aren't even wearing _shoes_.

In my blinking and salty vision I count three men in blue coats, probably officials of some sort, one of them supporting me, his uniform has been warmed considerably by the sun. But the sun quickly vanishes, at least it is not present inside the bulk of the ship and there are no windows in the hallway. I'm surprised there is room enough in a ship for a hallway that winds quite like this.

A set of French doors open to a deceptively spacious cabin, crammed with globes, maps and wooden furniture. The walls are faded yellow, faded from sunlight exposure, accented with hazy teal and gold lines; these colours cover all the walls except for one that is lined with slanted windows, it's nearly an optical illusion. I stumble and free my arms so I can sit on the floor and regain my equilibrium. A cannon sits on either end of the room. _Cannons_. I rub my eyes to rid myself of the strange hallucination.

"So what gives, you guys reenacting a war or something?" I tease half-heartedly.

"No mum, this is a merchant vessel," one of the scrappy men tells me. "What on Earth are you doing all the way out here, what happened to your ship?" I frown at the assumption that I ended up here by ship.

"Plane," I correct him. He frowns back and looks to his superiors for consultation, they too are confused. "Don't tell me you don't know what a plane is." Evidently, they don't. "I appreciate your commitment to realism, but this is the time to break character."

"I don't gather your meaning mum. What do you mean when you say plane?" His confusion is cute, but unhelpful.

"A _plane_." I don't think enunciation is the problem here. "Those dealies that fly..." The fingers tipped with a French manicure that I was using to gesticulate an explanation curl into protective fists. "What happened to the other passengers, where am I?" No one seems to want to answer my desperate question and instead assault me with their own.

One of the men in blue coats and white wigs takes a threatening step towards me, clearly taking advantage of being able to dwarf me while I sit on the floor. There is a look of disgust and fear in his cold blue eyes and his face is pockmarked, giving him the expression of an orange peel. A trace of unwarranted hostility in his voice is only the slightest bit marred by worry, "What is your name!"

Another, younger officer offers me his hand to pull me to my feet. I push it away without thinking so he takes a knee beside me. A black felt hat is perched on a voluminous white wig that frames his sculpted face well. If he didn't look like a soft ice cream I'd say he was attractive. "How did you get so far out at sea?" he asks me in a voice that makes my head swim.

"I crashed." My head swims and aches. A cup of water is handed to me, I gulp it back gratefully and ignore its stale taste. "Where are we now?"

"You are on the HMS Endeavour, off the coast of Spain, heading to England." Atlantic coast, nevermind. "Dover, specifically," he adds and receives a stern glare from the other one. Apparently I wasn't supposed to know that, as if it makes any kind of difference.

My voice is sticky, like I haven't used it in a thousand years. "Okay... Who cares about that?" I am quickly running into a patience deficit. "My plane crashed and apparently I'm the only one out of two hundred that survived. _What _the _fuck _am I doing on a_ wooden ship_, I'd rather be on the goddamn Titanic!" My voice has risen so much that it irritates my throat and I have to stop my tirade and cough into a balled fist.

The officers exchange stern looks of confusion which only serves to cause me panic. I must be insane. The more considerate of the three, the one kneeling next to me, asks calmly, "Where did you come from? You look a wreck and must've hit your head. Can you remember what happened to your ship?"

I am at a loss. "It's not a ship, or a raft, or a boat, or an _anything _that sails-" My redundant explanation falls short when the doors fly open in the trail of a flamboyantly dressed man in a hurry. He too wears a sleek white wig under a stiff black hat, but his clothes suggest that he has more money than he knows what to do with.

He walks importantly around the larger of two heavy desks and gives me a forced look of compassion that reminds me of a face that I pull when I try to calculate a tip, speaking to me like a shy child being coaxed gently out of their shell.

"Can you remember your name? Where you come from? Come take a seat, would you like something to drink?"

_Would you like to watch TV? Or get between the sheets, or contemplate the silent freeway? Would you like something to eat?_

Shakily, I hoist myself up and take the seat he pulls out for me in front of his desk. He sits in the more comfortable looking upholstered one on the other side, looking very important. "Leave us please gentlemen." They all obey without another word; their retreating footsteps melt together into ambiance.

His eyes are the first thing I notice in full depth, they are somewhere between blue and green and light enough that it doesn't matter. He has soft features, but there is some kind of steel in his eyes that lends hardness to his entire face. He carries himself with precision and dignity follows close behind him like a cape.

When the room is empty, save for the two of us, I answer him in as loud a voice as I can manage. The salt in my windpipe is still horribly scratching my throat. "My name is Leigh. Abel. And I'm from Canada. But yesterday I was in Australia."

Right away he is confused. "Are you sure you don't mean Austria? Abel is a Hungarian name."

"Yeah, but _no_, I mean Australia but that's not important right now - we're in the Atlantic ocean right? Okay _that _makes sense, we were flying over the Atlantic when we crashed."

I can hear how hard he is trying to keep the incredulous laughter out of his voice. "I beg your pardon but I really don't understand. You can't have been flying over anything; you have no wings so I am forced to assume that you were hallucinating or that you have injured your head."

"No goddamnit, I just said this five fucking times..." Finally, the gravity of the situation becomes clear to me and I begin to panic. "Oh God, Oh Fucking Jesus Fucking Christ, oh shit -! Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?"

"You would do well in the world by holding your tongue," he snaps with sharp precision, then softens his tone to appease my wet eyes. "Think, please, how did you get here?"

I clear my throat and take him in. "I was on a fourteen hour flight from Melbourne, Australia back home to Vancouver. It was maybe around four in the morning. There was a storm, and suddenly we're in a tailspin, the engines failed, maybe. _Something _happened, I don't know, I blinked and I was floating in the ocean. Alone, _no _survivors, _no _debris from the crash. I wouldn't even call myself a survivor, what the hell did I survive?"

He purses his humourless lips. "So this is your story and you refuse to alter it?"

His lack of enthusiasm is wringing out my dry humour. "That's what happened. If you want me to tell you about the in-flight entertainment I could do that too."

His clasped hands cover his mouth but the thoughtful lines on his brow reassure me. "Explain this to me again. In detail."

A very deep breath works its way through my oxygen-starved brain. "I was on a flight home from Australia to Vancouver when the-"

"Where is Vancouver?"

"On the west coast of Canada, where I live," I explain patiently. "The northern half of North America. So the plane-"

"And a plane is?"

It takes me a moment to think of what to say. "I've never had to explain this before. It's a flying machine. A big metal tube with wings. Uses... thrust and air speed velocity. Something like that."

"How many people were on the plane?"

"Probably around two hundred, give or take."

"That is a terrible loss. And your family?"

"They weren't on the plane. My friend was... a terrible loss." I swallow heavily and repeat, hoping he'll drop it before my emotions thaw. "So the engines failed or something and-"

"A steam engine?" The weird part isn't that he sounds perplexed, it's that he sounds awed, as if the steam engine were some almighty technology. That is what hits me.

"A _steam _engine?" I can't help repeating in disbelief, almost laughing. "What _year_ is it?"

Taken aback, he stutters, "S-seventeen forty-six." The first straight answer I've gotten.

I knew I was far back, but that was like a kick to the chest. There are so many questions and uncertainties that my mind draws a blank and hides in some corner to regroup. "That far, huh? I won't even be born for two hundred and fifty years... Well less than that, but this is no time for math," I murmur into my hands as a pulsating shiver runs through me. I don't even exist.

There is a pregnant silence between us as this statement hangs in the air. His eyes linger on my hands, probably on my acrylic nails. Simple shit, but not to a guy on a wooden ship of fools. I wonder how he will react to my candy red hair, when it dries and lightens up. I shouldn't have dyed it. The evidence is stacked against me, I just know I'm going to be called a witch at least a dozen times.

He tries to speak but I can't will myself to do anything more than hold a trembling hand up to silence him, making a desperate little noise in the back of my throat. I am scared. There is a film of wetness over my eyes which are almost permanently open. I am scared. By the time I find my voice all I can say is, "I'm scared."

He scrutinizes me, not unkindly, only trying to decode me. I would hardly expect him to let me cry on his shoulder or comfort me, because I hardly think he has convinced himself that I am not just making up a story to save myself from some undetermined fate. Which is exactly what I'm doing, but I'm being completely honest about it. Which, now that I think about it, is probably the worst thing I could have done.

A crippling and justifiable panic seizes me because he probably does think I'm a witch, or at least a liar and he's likely to throw me overboard. But I force my eyes to stay trained on the desk. My knuckles are as pale as the bone hiding under the skin.

The silence doesn't last as long as I'd hoped. Forever would have been preferable. "Look at me, please." The please sounds like a formality but I do it anyway, realizing too late that my eyes are round as dinner plates in my terror. He frowns in thought, again not unkind. "I understand that you're frightened, but you must take some time to calm your nerves. You're safe now."

"Now. Sure," I mumble in a small voice, deliberately averting my eyes again. "but that's exactly what I'm afraid of... You believe me, don't you?" Bravely, I search his eyes for signs of mistrust and find none.

"I'm not entirely sure." Despite wanting to hear an unconditional yes even though I know he would only be humouring me, despite the fear that grips me in a choke hold at the unreadability in his face and voice, I am deeply glad that he is being honest with me. "You should get some rest and recover first, then we can discuss this some more. Until then, if you don't think it too terrible I would suggest that you remain indoors, otherwise the crew-" I attempt to cut him off politely, warning him to stop first with my hands.

"Please, I understand why I should be out of sight, at least for now." My body readjusts itself on the chair that I was perched on the edge of. "I'd rather be out of sight for now anyway... God..." I moan into my hands. "I'm in the middle of the fucking ocean on a BOAT! This morning I was on a plane thirty thousand feet into the air - _sure_ we fell the fuck out of the sky! - but if we hadn't I would be home by now." Give me convenience or give me death. I didn't realize there was a third option.

Luckily he seems unperturbed. "And Vancouver is your home? Where is it exactly? I've never heard of that colony."

"You know where you British are flooding into North America from? You've probably already found the Hudson Bay. Well Vancouver is on the other side of the continent, on the west coast."

"You British?" he sneers. "You are a subject of the king as well, you are no outsider. You live in the colonies, don't you?"

I can only shrug and try not to antagonize him. "What used to be the colonies, sure. But we call the north half Canada and the south half America now. Neither of us have a king either." Neither does Britain, now that I think about it. The monarchy is a tourist trap.

He blinks and sounds genuinely befuddled. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"America fought it's way to independence and Canada waded it out and signed our way to independence. Britain couldn't mother us forever."

"I don't understand."

My own defeat chains itself around my throat as I start to struggle with breath. "Neither do I. The only thing I understand at the moment is that I seem to be from the future. I thought I was from the present, but now... I guess not."

"I don't mean to belittle you," he begins in a tone that suggests otherwise. "but that is ridiculous."

I nod emphatically. "I don't know what I'm going to do. Everything I know is gone. Unless this is a dream, in which case this would be a perfect time to wake up."

Reluctantly, he puts a hand into a richly embroidered pocket.

"This was found on your person when we brought you aboard. I thought you could tell me what it is." A flash of black polished metal catches my eyes and I feel hope protrude though my mind. I can't breathe for the relief and my head sinks to the table.

And exclamation of "Oh God!" slips from my lips. The words don't exist to describe my feelings. Something I once knew, other than me, still exists. "My iPod..." I don't care if it doesn't work (I am forced to assume that it doesn't or risk hysteria) just the thought of holding it is enough to bring me to tears. I extend my hands pathetically to cradle it, staring at it like a childhood friend as the black earphones drag along behind it.

"What is it?" His voice holds an odd mixture of intrigue and contempt.

I sniffle. "It's um... it plays music. I can't believe I'm holding it..."

He seems just as awestruck as I am. "It's... an instrument? This tiny scrap?"

"No it doesn't make music, it plays it. Look," I present it to him and point out each button individually. "this wheel on the front; the menu button, the pause button, the skip forward and skip back buttons, and this one in the middle is the accept button. You select a song this way. Look, turn it over. There's a serial number, the Apple logo-" He takes it from me to take a closer look at it. Immediately he has questions.

"The apple, this silhouette? What does it mean?"

"The company that makes iPods is called Apple. They make computers and sound system equipment too, but to explain what those are would take hours and I don't wanna get into that right this second. Read the back."

"Well there's the logo, underneath it says iPod... one hundred twenty G.B... what is-"

"G.B. stands for gigabyte, its a unit of measurement. Keep reading. It's all very official."

"Serial number... designed by Apple in California, assembled in China... Where is California?"

"It's one of fifty states in America, on the west coast."

"Seems a long way to travel for one little device."

That astute remark energizes me. "Tell me about it... everything is mass produced in the east and sold in the west. America doesn't make anything anymore, that's why their economy's in the shit. Keep reading." He seems to be enthralled by my vague ramblings about the economy, but due to my prompt he reluctantly returns his eyes to the iPod.

"There is a model number, this EMC number... I haven't the faintest idea what any of these mean."

"Yeah, me neither. But I know how it works and that's all we ever need to know. Even though nobody ever reads the instruction manual."

"What do these symbols mean?"

"Uh... this one means it's non-recyclable. Electrical parts and all that has to be disposed of separately... and this one means its... kosher? I don't know." I have to laugh at myself. "Maybe I should have read the manual."

He perks up slightly, becoming eager. I begin to fidget because I can't give him a demonstration. That won't do my credibility any favours. "So how does it work?"

"It's still wet which means it doesn't. Water and electricity don't get along very well. When it dries out it might start working again... I don't even know your name."

"Mr Cutler Beckett of the Honourable East India Trading Company." PROTIP: if you have to specify that a company is honourable, it probably isn't. "However, I wouldn't advise you to remember it. Without hearing this music I find it difficult to accept your story, do forgive me Miss Abel." He stands and readies himself, smoothing his jacket compulsively. "We shall divigate our course to Corunna and I'm afraid that will be the end of my hospitality towards you-" What can I do if he won't help me? My guts twist in apprehension. I am Jane's morbid sense of defeat. Unless...

"WAIT!" I find myself yelling. "This is a merchant ship. Which would make you a businessman, right?"

"Yes."

To hell with the butterfly effect. "So let's do business." Immediately, I lose respect for myself.

I don't blame him for laughing, but it's still a blow to my dwindling pride. "I'm afraid the East India Company doesn't hire women." I should have known. It's all my vagina's fault, as per usual.

I try not to sound desperate. "I'm not talking about getting me a job with your company. I'm talking about selling _you_ information, personally."

"What kind of information?" His eyes narrow suspiciously but at least he is taking me seriously. He should be.

"The kind that only comes from experience. I took a lot of history classes in university-" Cutler doesn't seem the type to senselessly interrupt, but there's a first for everything apparently.

"You went to university? But how? And why?" In his own small oblivion, he falls back into his seat.

"I've only been through two years so far because I started late, but I like it. As for how, I'm paying for it," With my trust fund. If I wasn't spending it on school, I'd be spending it on drugs. "I'm doing a major in theatre and a minor in philosophy but I like history too so I took a lot of that. Apparently it's going to come in handy after all." Who says you can't get a job with a arts degree?

"A moment. You study philosophy. In university."

"Yeah," I confirm slowly. "Epicurus is one of my favourites, but I really dig existentialists like Sartre and apocalyptic cynics like Nietzsche and..." Your God isn't dead, he's just sleeping. "That's weird. Sartre and Nietzsche aren't around yet. Not for another hundred years, I think, they're not even born yet."

I slip into my thoughts on the matter, my eyes flying upwards when Cutler speaks again. "... I'm sorry if I offend, but I must know. How old are you?"

"I'll never be offended by a direct question. I'm twenty-four."

He's astonished, no trace of mocking in his silky voice."And you're not married? I see you don't have a wedding band."

I blink. "Is that a joke?" I ask. "No. No, never." I smile at him for the first time. "Tradition is dead people's baggage, and I won't burden myself with it." I have a life outside my kitchen.

"What on Earth do you mean by that? Marriage and children, is that not your whole duty as a woman, or am I mistaken?"

"You are mistaken." The expression on his face seems to reset, it tickles me to see that this is his only reaction to being told he is wrong. That's good. "The funny thing is... I know what the social norms are in this era so your quaint reactions shouldn't surprise me... but they do, and it baffles me."

He squints, interested. "So that's not a rite of passage in your culture, then?"

"Not really. I guess you could still call it that but then that same logic applies to divorce if over half of marriages end in it." I grin sheepishly at the statistic and notice that there isn't a ring on his finger either.

"Enough of that for now, tell me more about this information you possess. You may tell me all about your cultural norms after I know what you have to offer." Probably too much, now that I think about it.

I take a bracing breath and hold it. "I can tell you about every major government, discovery and war from now until the next millennium. I can tell you about physics, human history, chemistry, biology, geology, art, math, theology, sociology, philosophy, psychology," I'm running out of subjects, "medicine, sustainable energy and economics. And this is mostly from a general education. The more artsy and abstract the subject the more detail I can go into, but things like chemistry and physics I can only give so much."

Now I've done it. He probably sees me as a bloated golden goose. "I don't think I could turn that down if I tried. In light of that, I think we can do business after all. I would be delighted to, in fact. Shall we outline some parameters and conditions for our mutual benefit?"

Relief strengthens my bones. "Absolutely. What did you have in mind?" He seems eager to do business now. You'll get yours for doubting, Thomas. His precise gaze bores into my resolve, thin as it is.

"You will stay as a guest in my country home at Dover. I won't always be there if I am called away for work so you will be expected to stay out of sight until I return. I would ask you not to draw unwanted attention to yourself. Especially with those clothes, we shall have to have a wardrobe tailored for you when we arrive." My eyes sparkle; this is turning out fabulously. "I must ask, what is it that you are wearing? I've never seen a woman in trousers before in all my days."

Stupidly, I laugh and look down at myself. My wet hair gets in the way and my leg starts to fidget, creating a crease around my wallet and knife. Three relics. Don't waste time creating significance. I need to give myself a moment to mentally affirm its location on my person before I make its presence known. "They're called skinny jeans."

Lines appear between Cutler's eyebrows and he huffs distastefully, "Well they certainly are."

"Hey you're the one in calf socks. If you wore that outfit where I come from you would be laughed at. Wearing this, I might be burned at the stake."

"Hardly."

"Don't you still believe in witches?" Smart phrasing on my part. Implying disdain for belief in them and suggesting that no one does anymore. I will never know if that influenced his answer.

"I don't. The superstitious do, however. Sailors are especially superstitious. For that reason, if you are asked about your story be sure of whom you are speaking to, not everyone needs to know of time travel." He says it like a dirty word. "If the crew asks, tell them you can't remember a thing." So I'll pull a Velma Kelly.

I'm not going to pretend to have accidentally found my wallet at this moment in time. "Before you say anything else I want you to look at this." It's made of red pleather, compact and zippered. "This is my wallet. Further proof, in case you need it." Cutler's breathing shakes slightly, he may have been hoping for proof I'm lying just to spare himself the burden of imagination.

He just stares at it in his hands, turning it over. "You can look inside if you want."

Almost sheepishly he admits, "I'm not sure I know how."

I open it for him, zipping it back and forth to demonstrate. "It's just a zipper. You don't have those?" I shuffle through its contents for him. "This is my health card, my driver's license, points card for Rocky Mountain Chocolates, my student ID, my credit cards, debit card... and thirty expired gift cards that I've had for five years and never threw out.

"I suppose this to be your money? And it's made of paper? Wet paper, as it were."

"This is an old bill, and yeah it's made of paper. But the new bills," I show him a crisp Canadian fifty. "are made of plastic so they can't be counterfeited."

"Or ruined by water."

"Even the paper ones don't get ruined in water. I've put my wallet through the laundry many, many times."

"Wouldn't your laundry maid notice it?" Cutler wonders innocently.

"That's cute, you think it's done by hand."

"...How else is it done?"

"By machine. I've never had servants. I don't know anyone who has. We have technology."

"That's bizarre!" he exclaims delightedly. "Who cooks for you?"

"I do." I'm slightly taken aback.

"And who do you cook for?" he presses.

"_Me_," I insist.

"Why?"

"Because I don't need any help. I'm self-sufficient. I provide for myself and only myself." By now he is smiling softly and I think I can rest easy for a while knowing that he believes me. He places the wallet near my hands on the table and looks friendlier.

"We can't stay on topic for two consecutive moments, it seems. Before I make any more promises regarding your living arrangements, I would like for you to give me one individual piece of information. I assume that you are making plans regarding the knowledge you have, how to use it best. Tell me what you would like to do first."

Plagues and People, first year. My prof was some FOB, could hardly understand him but his lectures were straight from the textbook so I didn't even summon the energy to go to class, it was redundant. I apologize profusely to whoever discovered penicillin, but this is a selfish world. "I can introduce a cure for syphilis, and most bacterial infections. Something that wasn't even used until the fifties will now be discovered in seventeen forty-six." You're welcome.

"The seventeen-fifties?"

"No. Nineteen fifties." He leans back in amazement.

"Bloody hell... In what year were you born?" There is sweat on his brow that mixes some loose wig powder, making it a milky colour.

"Nineteen eighty-seven."

Those ball bearing eyes fall to the table top. "That would mean..." He doesn't want to say it out loud. I don't blame him.

"Two thousand twelve," I supply for him; he pales.

"_Two thousand_..."

"Twenty-twelve." I nod gently. "I was a kid at the start of the new millennium. I didn't understand the significance, I thought it was just another year." Thinking of all the implications make me dizzy, my face gravitates down to the tabletop.

My companion is having a similar reaction. His voice has lost all sense of command. "I completely forgot about offering you a drink, but now it seems I'll need one as well. I'm afraid all I have is wine and brandy. Which would you prefer?"

"Whichever is stronger."

"Funny, I was thinking just the same." He opens a beautifully gilded and velvet-lined box for a glass decanter of brandy that is the colour of good green tea, and two snifters. He fills them higher than what would be acceptable under normal social circumstances. I am tempted to drain my glass in a single shot, but I refrain from doing so. I drain it in two. Consecutively.

"Why don't you tell me some about your society?" Cutler refills me immediately. I wonder vaguely if he is using the same technique on me as his honourable countrymen used on Native Americans to gain their assets. But therein lies my advantage; I know exactly what he's doing. If I do happen to get more drunk than would be advisable, I can always count on my brain to ramble about useless trivia.

In regards to modern society, I can't think of many good things. You'd think I would be more nostalgic, but I'm still just a bitter old crone. "We may be more technologically advanced but we're still hopelessly immature."

"Immature?"

"Short-sighted would be a better word."

"In what way?"

"We cling to comforting lies rather than face our problems." The comforting lies we learned from you.

"What sort of problems?"

"The usual problems. Sexual exploration. Freedom of speech. The desire for free education, open government, and no one behind the curtain."

"Is that what would you like to change here and now?" he asks dryly, my ambitions will make waves in his social circle.

Before I start being selfish I'll do something good. "Human rights, pensions, welfare, unions. It won't be any good, but it'll be a start. One of our biggest problems in the future is finding renewable sources of energy. We're an entire world dependant on fossil fuels. We start wars for them. Wars with modern weapons. It's scary what people with power will do for a little more power. Kind of makes me wish I was an anarchist but I just don't trust people that much. I guess if I can set you on a more sustainable path now we won't have so much trouble in the future." Always a self-serving breed.

"You sound bitter if you don't mind me noticing." Apparently my cynicism is palpable. And my sense of patience and tact is back at the airport.

Some tragic frustration is hiding in me. "I have every fucking right to be bitter. My best friend is dead, everyone on the plane is dead, and I'm stuck with survivor's guilt. What do I have to lose now?"

"I'm sorry to have upset you-"

"No, Cutler, _you_ didn't upset me, the _world_ upset me. Whatever the _fuck_ is going on is what's upsetting me. You have very little to do with it."

"There must be a reason for what you believe is happening to you." What if there isn't? Reality isn't obliged to explain its reasoning.

"This isn't fair." It really, really isn't. "I'm at a loss, like, what's left for me to hold on to?" Unconsciously, I squeeze the hard shell of my iPod, which has warmed from my grip.

"I am confident you will find something," Cutler says, trying to be cheerful and failing. "Why don't you tell me something about where you come from." How talking about things I've lost is supposed to help me, I don't know, but he has been kind enough to show tact so I'll humour him.

"I don't know where to begin." No lie.

He smiles strangely. "Begin with something revolutionary. Something you would call the defining discovery of your time." A perfect suggestion. I nod appreciatively and smile a little in spite of myself.

"That would be the internet. I guess you could call it a data network. It's an invisible web of information that connects the whole world."

"Was it discovered, or created?"

My eyebrows rise. "Good question. Created. It's like a global Gutenberg press. Incidentally, there is a collection of classic digitized books through something called Project Gutenberg."

"You've come full circle and are making the rounds once more."

"D'you know what the port city was called that was the birthplace of Greek philosophy?"

Cutler blinks bemusedly at my sudden change of topic, but I have a point to make. "Miletus."

"Right. Think of the internet like Miletus, only infinitely larger, containing exponentially more information, and you don't have to travel to get there."

He scoffs half-seriously, teasing, "Shouldn't you have known the name, being that you are a student of philosophy?"

"I have other things on my mind." He doesn't break his business gaze but the hard condescension in his eyes flickers momentarily. I don't think he meant to upset me, so I continue as if nothing happened. "I figure because there is no frontier left in the physical world we created a new strategic reserve of mystery. There's a saying I've heard: If the government shuts down your internet, shut down your government." Cutler gulps and his eyes lose their steel entirely. "It's _serious_, the internet has grown to represent freedom of expression and thought and opinion. Countries that have oppressive governments are reflected in that respect. China is infamous for that, detaining political activists, journalists, artists, bloggers."

I begin tapping my nails on the desk in 9/8 for a short moment before Cutler finally wraps his head around what I just told him. "Explain to me, if you would," he drawls aristocratically. "how exactly it connects the world."

"Anyone with a computer, which is the device that you use the internet on, can use the internet. You can send messages called email to anyone else with a computer, anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes."

"Minutes?" he repeats, aghast. His whole face goes slack, like a child who found out Santa Claus is just Dad, snarfing down the milk and cookies diligently left out.

"Because it's data and not physical. News is available on the internet, entertainment, music, there's online schools, online books, online businesses and shopping – with delivery services at an added cost – maps, thanks to Google. Google is a verb, it was added to the dictionary because it became so useful and so common. To Google something means to look it up. It's a search engine, like a concentrated library of every kind of information. You search a keyword, anything, and you get relevant results based on your search in less than a second. It actually says in the corner of the page "so many millions of results in some fraction of a second". Crazy, right?"

"Under normal circumstances I would say yes. It's very nearly overwhelming to hear so much about a strange culture in such a short space of time."

"I'm sorry, I just feel like talking... I don't know what else to do."

"It's nothing to be sorry for, but I wasn't finished. Despite that, it is becoming increasingly more obvious that you are not simply creating a plausible story. I don't believe you could have made up this entire culture in the span of two hours. Could you?" he adds, willing himself to be proven wrong just to spare himself the brain pain.

A whimpering laugh escapes ahead of my answer, "I don't know! If I could tell you then I wouldn't know, and if I did know I couldn't tell you. Time travel was something I thought was only in science fiction. But then again, reality usually is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. Reality can do whatever the fuck it wants, apparently."

"I would say otherwise. Reality bends to you not vice versa. If you are convinced that something is true, it is because you want it to be true, and so it is. The conviction and the desires behind that conviction are what constitute reality, therefore what you want to see in reality is what you have." I have given up trying to explain myself and he knows it and he is kind enough to leave me staring at my hands. I realize I have been shaking my head.

What do I want?

I want heroin to be healthy. Here's what I don't want: I don't want to be stuck on a wooden ship in the middle of the eighteenth century, yet here I am. How can we know what reality is? If reality is a free agent, like a full pot of tea, and I am an empty cup filed to the top, there is still tea in the pot but the cup can't hold any more or else it will overflow. Which is more like the other? Objective and subjective perceptions make a whole lot of contrast; the pot holds more than we could ever hope to understand, so what gives us the right to say we do?

I am talking to myself again.

_thoughts? (i made some small edits thanks to the constructive criticism i received)_

_xoxo_


	2. Disorder

_this chapter has over 10,000 words so strap yourselves in. as the story goes on the chapters won't be nearly as long, but sometimes there are a few things that have to be said in the same chapter to retain the mood and stay close to the point. _

_i promised myself a smoke if i finished this chapter today, hope you have time to read it. also, its a terrible idea to use smoking as positive reinforcement._

**Joy Division - Disorder**

_March 7th 1746_

In the long twenty four hours that I have been awake in the massive hull of this floating crate I have started to go slowly insane. In wet clothes and hard in jetlag I didn't sleep at all but I couldn't summon the mental strength to take off any more than my sweater. They're dry now, so it makes no difference. I thought that maybe the jetlag would work in my favour and lull me to sleep even with all the stress around me, but not this time. Not to mention the noise. The constant banging of footsteps above and below is agonizingly repetitive and after a while it became hard to tell up from down.

My only consolation is that I have no seasickness, though I wasn't expecting any. The occasional twinge in my guts is easily ignored.

In the morning Cutler can't sit still. Lying awake on a cot in the small back room of Cutler's office I can hear him pacing the floorboards thin and the scratching of his quill. I tried, but couldn't think of a reason why he would be so restless because as far as he knew he had just been handed the golden calf of opportunity. He should be celebrating, or at least plotting, but as far as I can tell my existence hasn't much deterred him from his daily business.

The room I occupy has just enough room for a cot and a chamber pot, but luckily there is a large window behind the bed that takes up almost the entire section of wall, making it much less claustrophobic. I really like it because it's easier to contain my thoughts in a small room; the rate at which I'm mentally deteriorating is slowed.

My futile attempts at sleep were as follows. I would close my eyes and tell myself to sleep. I tried to regulate my breathing but when I began to concentrate on that my eyes would suddenly snap open. I didn't remember opening them, but as soon as my focus shifted from "close your eyes" to "go to sleep" my eyelids would spring open. So eventually when I sighed and accepted defeat I sat up and opened the door, but I stayed seated and brought my knees to my chin.

"How did you sleep?" Cutler asks crisply, looking very well rested and seeming totally satisfied with his state of mind. He looks pristinely content and I feel twice as miserable because of it. He wears a suit of dark green velvet and lavish silver embroidery around the buttons, and tall black boots. His wig is blinding in the path of sunlight.

I wonder if he's bald, or balding, but given the circumstances I just write it off as a very misguided fashion statement. I wonder what I look like to him.

All I can do is stare blankly at the wall directly opposite me. "I didn't." I rock around in a full rotation until I sigh resolutely. "I believe I am insane." But that in itself proves my sanity, for I am able to see the other side of possibility and accept my descent into madness calmly.

"I didn't realize I was harbouring Ophelia." I can't be sure of how I am supposed to interpret what the sarcasm is aimed at; Cutler's brand of homestyle cynicism is throwing me off. My final decision is to humour him and aim for a cheap laugh.

"Should I just jump ship now to save you the trouble of finding a plank and shark-infested waters?" At least I got that cheap laugh.

He goes about his business, moving from a shelf with a scroll and a leather bound book to his desk on the other end of the room, without breaking the flow of conversation. "Why couldn't you sleep last night? Was it the ship that kept you up?"

A large sigh leaves me before I speak. I have to explain it to both of us. "I'm afraid that if I go to sleep knowing that I'm going to wake up here... if I try to deny it and believe this is a dream but wake up here that the sheer weight of that realization being the first thing in my mind will be too much and I'll just give up... The mind is a dangerous ocean. But for once I'm grateful for the funnel." This climactic sigh of calm envelops me in chilling comfort, thankful for my biology being so goddamn confounding.

"You'll excuse me but you are leaving me no choice but to ask: what funnel?" He asks, now leaning over a large table with a hole in the centre where a globe is mounted.

"Raw sensory stimulation is a powerful thing." Just ask Alex De Large. "If you could see things objectively through your eyes it would literally blow your mind." I realize my hands are in the air and I've been miming myself. "So the brain has developed this funnel of sensory stimulation that filters out unnecessary information - unnecessary being that it isn't necessary for your immediate survival - and your final perception is one that is splintered and faulty, but still capable of basic understanding. I mean let's all take this with a grain of salt." I've earned a smirk for the diatribe. I'm a rambler.

"Your funnel must be leaking," he teases me without his eyes leaving the tabletop.

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," I hum to myself, almost a song.

His head snaps up and a look of righteous confusion appears on his face. "That's terrible phrase you know," he exclaims impassively. "Whatever doesn't kill you is far more likely to leave you crippled or sick. Did you just come up with that?" The laugh that leaves me is a chiming bell, snapping me into a tranquil rut.

"Friedrich Nietzsche said it first, but I guess I said it first now. I've got a gold mine of cheap cliches to send your way, you'd better write them down."

"Is that so?" I see a curious smile on his face; it doesn't seem like the kind of emotion he shows very often. I wonder briefly how often he lets his guard down. "You mentioned him yesterday, I believe. German?"

"Yeah." I'm trying to say more about it, but I just don't have the voice in me. I fiddle with my hair for a few minutes with the kind of rapt attention that only sleep deprivation and unexpected time travel can bring. "Does it bother you that I swear and that I'm not very nice?" I don't plan on being too culturally sensitive.

He answers me with a shake of his head and a nonchalant "Not particularly." He has to be lying. I'm the antithesis to everything he was raised to believe a woman should be, how could it not bother him? If not, then he's way ahead of the curve, which isn't likely. He strikes me as the type to manipulate his own views in exchange for profit. And I have this unpleasant feeling that I may have to do the same very soon. "As long as you have something relevant to say. However I trust you will clean up your vocabulary when we make port."

"Fuck is only a word." Fuck is special. It's a dirty word that comes out clean.

After a pause he retorts in deadpan, "The same may be said for most of them." A corner of his lip pulls upwards. "I shall relieve you of your manners for the time being, but remember that you are a guest of myself, which makes you part of the upper class. You will be expected to conform to certain societal rules because you won't be taken a mite seriously if you act like a profane fool."

"I take it not everyone is as open-minded as you?"

His hands intertwine immaculately before he speaks. I can hear the starch in his skin. "The people I will be introducing you to are the ones who will be deciding upon the success of your future. They must favour you if you want to have recognition and not be left a hopeless guttersnipe because I assure you, if they do not wish to help you I certainly will not continue to." There is a pause to let that threat sink in. "I will send for a tailor as soon as we make port, you can't be seen in this garb without bringing attention. We will be in Dover in less than a week, from there you will follow me to my manor and stay there until I say otherwise." I raise an eyebrow at his tone but say nothing.

An unexpected and cleansing moment of clarity overcomes me and my mind is suddenly empty of worry and plotting. Words tumble out of my mouth with little thought. "Hey, before we get into that, I really, really want to thank you because no matter what else I say, I will always mean this: I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you're doing and the kind of weight that you've removed from my shoulders, and I'm sure-" The expression on his face grows gentle, he raises a hand to stop me.

"It is no trouble on my behalf, but I graciously accept your thanks in return. I would only ask that you continue being honest with me. This is a business relationship, it is fundamental that it is not founded on lies." What kind of relationship can be? "That being said I am as much at your service as you are mine. Please don't hesitate to bring your needs to my attention."

"Can we look for a guitar in town?" The camaraderie drains from his face to be replaced by acute horror.

"We most certainly will not. I won't have a chance in all hell to masquerade you well enough if you have callouses. That's completely unacceptable." Uh oh.

My lips purse nervously. "I've been playing the guitar since I was fourteen and my callouses are as tough as they're ever going to be." My guts freefall but Cutler only frowns at my hands.

"Then you'll need gloves."

I smile sheepishly. "Thanks for not giving up on me." His eyes dart away to a window.

"Yes, well... You see the coast there?" He points to the window behind me; we are close enough that individual trees are visible. "That is where we make port. But before I agree to let you come ashore you must give me your word that you will not cause a commotion or try to run off."

A pathetic breath escapes my lips, "I don't have anywhere to run to." As soon as the words are gone from my mouth where I can't take them back, I realize how vulnerable I am.

He gives no sign of triumph at my admission, but I have a very dark feeling that he is plotting just as hard as I am. It seems we are in a state of Cold War. "Then yes you may be escorted by myself into Corunna. On the one condition that you comply to the tailor and have a dress made, just so you have something... _era appropriate_ to wear," he adds with an undertone of disdain.

"Fair enough. You bringing them here so-"

"Oh, no you can see the tailor in town. You're not staying in Spain so I think it would not be too terrible if you were seen briefly in _that_." _That_ being a simple tee and skinnies, and heavy black stompers. Even though I could wear this every day, for comfort reasons, hygiene begs to differ. I'll have to wear other clothes at some point, as they are stiff and crusty from the salt water. On the bright side my Hieronymus Bosch sweater is dry. The Garden of Earthly Delights by, yes, that Hieronymus Bosch. Leave it to Lauren to find me the most eye-gouge worthy article of clothing imaginable. Fucking art students.

"That... You say it like it's an abomination," I complain while pulling the sweater over my head, then throwing my hair over my shoulder.

"Well here and now, it is. Is that-?"

I smile and confirm brightly, "Yeah!" He admires it with genuine interest. "I'm so happy that you recognize it."

"I happen to have a reproduction in my home."

"That's awesome," I exclaim. He is even more taken aback by this.

"To a degree, I suppose , but I can't _wear_ it. This is remarkable!" His eyes move back to my face in confusion and an odd look of defeat at having to acknowledge that he does not know and is forced to ask, "... _how_...?"

"Machines. Everything is mass-produced by machines." With this information in mind, Cutler's expression of curiosity melts back into one of mild boredom. "This isn't an original, there must be thousands of people all over the world with the same sweater." I can't bring my mouth to speak Lauren's name.

"Nevertheless, I think it would be most wise not to wear something _so_... out of the ordinary in polite company," he says with delicate phrasing. Then he places a few silver coins into my hand. "There's five shillings for you. Spend it as you like." I think Cutler realizes the value of information. "Come. Let's not waste time."

I haven't been outside since the day before, haven't spoken to anyone but Cutler and when he retired to his personal cabin I spoke only to myself. The deck is mostly empty, however the harbour we are docked in is sheer madness.

We step down the gangplank onto the dock, it feels soft beneath my feet. A sudden image of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille sniffing the air appears in my mind as I smell the marketplace; dead fish, dying rotted wood, soft vegetables, dry horse smell, human smell. Truly a frightening cocktail of sensory rape. I feel like I can't do this kind of hideous smell justice (or injustice, as it would seem). Cutler was evidently prepared for this and has a handkerchief pressed to his face. He may look like a tool, but practicality is the name of the game and he hands a second one to me. I would never think to refuse, no matter how stupid I look.

If faced with mustard gas I'd piss on a rag and hold it over my nose. Here, faced instead with rotting decay and millennium old manure, I'll happily take my chances with a fine linen handkerchief. The smell becomes more bearable in the market, with all the spices to mask the worst of it.

I would have thought my outfit would cause more of a stir, but no one seems to notice much. As we make our way into the heart of the market something more familiar stink hits my nose through the rest. A tobacconists' door is open to the street and we step inside. The man behind the counter is wizened and smoking a pipe. I stay quiet and observe the dark ceiling and things hanging from it. Cutler speaks fluent Spanish, I am mildly impressed. He buys a pipe with a wide bowl and a thin stem, and a tamper, and a tin of snuff for himself, which he empties into a heavily ornate snuff box. The tobacconists' delivery boy is summoned from the back to carry the sack of tobacco to the ship.

"Do they have rice paper?" I wonder aloud, Cutler asks for me. No, they don't have it, but there is a Chinese merchant in the market who might have some.

"Whatever for?" Cutler asks mildly.

"To roll cigarettes with. Under normal circumstances they wouldn't exist until the nineteen hundreds but I just can't wait that long."

We pay the man and step outside again, I notice another familiar smell. There is a canvass shop three buildings down, making use of their useful hemp. "_Crazy_... Cutler, come with me, there's one more thing I want while we're here."

"You want a bloody sail?" he all but whines, disgruntled and puzzled. To my relief he doesn't refuse my whims.

The door jingles as I walk in and shield my eyes from the worst of the stench. Inside it's more of an open-concept workshop than a storefront. "I'd like to buy one of your hemp plants." I say evenly, hardly believing how easy it is to say. Cutler translates with a bite in his voice, feeling insulted that I've volunteered him as my translator.

"Aye?" Patronizing eyes are all I am getting out of this conversation. "¿Qué quieres eso? Para ejecutar me fuera del negocio?" He says with a booming laugh.

Cutler explains; I can hardly contain my apathy and my words come out dull. "If I was it wouldn't matter, I'm leaving for Dover today and I want a souvenir." Cutler grunts and seems to tell him something more hospitable. Or at least more direct.

"No es un problema mi amor, aquí-" In his burly arms is a small plant swaying, barely old enough to be called male. I'll have to make a project out of this one. "Usted tendrá buen cuidado de ella, ¿verdad?" He adds with another roar of laughter. Cutler drops a few coins on the counter without a second word and holds the door open for me.

"I don't think you will explain why you wanted a cannabis plant so I won't bother asking."

"Relax, there's no conspiracy. I just like to smoke."

"Smoke cannabis?"

I smile listlessly and silently accept his confusion.

The delivery boy is sprinting back this way, I stop him and give him the coins that have grown warm in my hand to put the plant on the ship as well. He runs off before even counting it. Cutler, however gets a sense much faster.

"Are you mad? How much did you give him?" he asks with sharp disdain.

"Just what was in my hand." I receive another distasteful look. We head for the tailor, further down into the clothing district.

"You shouldn't waste money on him."

"_Don't_ fucking tell me not to help people, what the hell's wrong with you?" My outburst was not expected and I catch myself. I don't want to apologize though.

Mildly annoyed, mediating tone. "There is no need to yell at me, I was merely telling you that his kind are more likely to lose that money gambling or on some other disreputable activity than to make real use of it. You are better off with those shillings in your pocket."

My pace slows a little, I feel bad. We march through the complicated market maze and break through to the main streets of town. The streets here are lined with tailors and bakeries and butchers and other domestic necessities.

Miguel the tailor is a middle aged man with dark brown hair and pale eyes. There is a business-mind behind his expression despite his lack of visual clarity. I wish I could speak openly to him, he must see a lot, must be good at observing people's mannerisms and look past their eyes into their souls. I would ask him what he sees in my benefactor's eyes, because I have a troubling feeling already.

Miguel says something and leaves the room. Cutler translates, "Put this on." He hands me a bundle of beige fabric that I stare blankly at.

"What is it?"

"A bodice. Things will go faster if you put it on." I shrug, not seeing why he has to be so snippy. I lift my shirt and sweater over my head, and when I can see again I notice that Cutler is wearing another look of derision. "If you turn your head slightly to the left you will see a changing screen that you are neglecting."

"You're right. Think fast," I throw the entangled sweater and shirt at him and laugh somewhat rudely at his fumble and following dirty look. "Sorry." I'm not. "But I see no reason why you should get all hot and bothered. I mean like, they're covered, come on. Try to act like an adult." I patronize with my hands on my naked hips, looking to scold his prudishness. Truthfully, I'm astounded at his patience. And I don't know why I'm acting this way, I like to think I'm much more level headed and understanding. I contemplate adjustments to my attitude for his sake, he's already done so much for me.

"Were you a prostitute in your former life?" I don't like that phrasing. This is still my life. My affection vanishes. I am petty.

"That's not funny," I mumble, turning my back to him.

"Bloody hell – what is _that_?" For a minute I have no idea what part of me could have offended him so suddenly. I always forget the tattoo. Then again, I don't have to acknowledge that I have feet to know they're there.

"It's a tattoo."

"Yes I can _see_ that it's a tattoo, what in all hell is it doing on your back?"

"That's where I decided to put it."

"And what idiocy coerced you into getting it? Hold still a moment, look what it reads! I could die at any moment, the tragedy is that I don't-"

"I _know_ what it says." My eyes begin to roll and don't stop.

"Side effects of unknown pleasures include but are not limited to: melancholia, self-loathing, satori-"

"It _was_ my idea you know." I can see his reflection, jabbing his fingers at every word he lists, furious that I kept this from him.

"Hilarity, terror, ecstasy, eternal suffering, suicide, and systematic extermination of the human mistake."

"It is my body."

"So how could you deface it like this? It's not even art, it's just a group of jagged lines and perverted words." The words are written on a bed of flowers that frame the sound waves.

Almost anti-climactically, "I never claimed to be a ray of sunshine."

"I don't care what you claim to be, what's the point to immortalizing this black and white rubbish on your own skin?"

If only you knew. "There was a point to it, but it's long gone."

"But the ink remains."

"Forever. Even after I'm dead."

"How damnably tragic." He seems to remember he is touching bare female skin and flinches a little which causes me to roll my eyes.

"I don't know why you're so afraid of a little skin," I condescend as I throw the shift over my head, nearly laughing as it hits my shins. The fabric is foreign to me. It's only linen, but it feels alien without any polyester or nylon or lycra. It crinkles like paper but only because it's new. Once I smooth it down and feel it out a little it breathes and morphs into something more familiar.

I look back, still touching the fabric. Cutler scoffs, making a face of mental constipation, "You stripped nearly naked in front of two complete strangers, _really_ it causes me to question your moral integrity. Do you have any shame at all?" I throw my hair back and the moment it hits my shoulders I know exactly how to entertain myself for the foreseeable future.

"You can't just make up words and expect me to know what they are."

"Beg pardon?" Cutler asks dully. "What word?"

"_Shame_," I mispronounce it slightly. "I've never heard that before. What does it mean?

"How can _you_ not know what shame is, _you_ of all people who need it most," he raves more to himself than to me.

"I'm still drawing a blank here. What is it?"

He explains slowly and carefully, ensuring I have no excuse to misinterpret him. "It's a bad feeling one gets when they have done something wrong. It helps you see your error and imprints that bad feeling with your wrongdoing so that you avoid doing it again in future." Operant conditioning, not that he would know.

I purse my lips in thought. I know I can turn this around to prove my point. "So shame is when you feel bad because you did something bad. Does it help you understand why the thing you did was bad?"

"Not directly. That comes from the people around you."

"Oh."

"Parents teach their children right from wrong, yes?"

"Yeah." Keep talking until I have something to twist in my favour

"They teach their child to feel shame when they do something wrong."

"But whey would the child do something they know is wrong in the first place?"

"I suppose because they can be cruel," Cutler muses, fiddling with the corner of a bolt of fabric. "Some would say it's only natural to be awful from time to time. You know how children can be. Children and adults alike, I should say."

"So what's the point in making them feel bad about natural behaviour?"

"Natural does not always coincide with good, Leigh." Miguel returns to the foyer with a clump of what looks to be a curtain. I make a face but don't resist.

"Well it's not an innate thing," I continue. "it's learned from people who learned it from other people _ad infinitum_. You don't think a few misinterpretations could have worked their way into that process?"

"I suppose they could have but the principle is sound. Some are raised better than others – _clearly_." Miguel asks Cutler something, who shakes his head and looks to me. "You need a corset." I'm not going to make a scene. Today.

"I should lose the bra then, right?" I unclip and slide it down my arms, pull the whole garment through one of the sleeves and throw it to Cutler who catches it, wordlessly fuming and foaming as if his lesson was wasted on me. A moment later, his irritation at being my coat rack is replaced by curiosity at what I call clothes. I watch his reflection in the mirror surreptitiously as I plan my next argument.

I nod gravely to Miguel who takes my facial expression in stride, approaching me with a strapless pink corset. I keep telling myself that it could be worse. I lift my hair for Miguel as he fastens the garment around me, "Not too tight, please." I whimper, slightly too terrified for my own good. Miguel acknowledges my plea and begins the lace work. It is hard to keep my balance and within a few tugs and stumbles I am finding it difficult to breathe properly, like I've been kicked in the chest. Kicked repeatedly, with steel-toed boots.

Time wants me to suffer by slowing with each pull of the strings and when they are sufficiently tightened I find that my arms have adopted an ape-like gait to compensate for the strange pressure enveloping my chest. Some skirt skeleton, reminiscent of bird cages on both of my hips, is buckled around my waist and two heavy white skirts are added over my head. I realize the need for a pre-made dress so we won't have to be here all day, so I won't have to suffer like this all day, but a little creative control would prove very helpful. Still, I realize that if I was given creative control I would most likely be declared a witch-prostitute and given an auto-da-fe. So the dress is pulled over my head and fluffed up properly.

The cream fabric is dotted with blue and yellow flowers, and green vines decoratively climb up the bodice. A plain white V of fabric is fastened over my stomach to hide the pink of the corset and a jacket with flowing Cinderella fabric on each side is added; the bunches of fabric are fastened with delicate little ties that make me afraid to move too violently or else sever them.

"Shitting Christ," I mutter to my grimacing reflection. I've never worn so much fabric at one time. Elbow-length sleeves, I am very nearly surprised that wrists are appropriate in this ass-backwards day and age, maybe I can get away with a little more. But my surprise is short-lived as well as ill-assumed because I am given a pair of white silk gloves to hide my sin feelers. "Can this be worn without a corset?"

Cutler translates Miguel's answer to a simple "Yes, but it will be tight."

"I can't even put my damn arms down what am – _oh_! It has _pockets_, there's a redeeming quality. Most women's clothes come with fake pockets, if any." I assumed this would be interesting enough to carry on conversation, but I am ignored as Cutler discusses price with Miguel; his face scrunching as he reaches for his money. He motions for me to step down, which I do and immediately begin to remove the dress, starting with those fragile ties.

"What are you doing?" Cutler rounds on me in irritation. "I've literally just paid for those and you're taking them off."

"I'll put it back on when we get to Dover, but there is no way in hell I'm wearing this shit on the boat ride there. Well don't just stand there, help me!" I prod Cutler who crosses to my back with a sigh. I remove the coat and everything else within my reach, but I can't untie the complex corset strings by myself, even if my fake nails weren't getting in the way. I pull the skirts over my head with minimal struggle and hand them to Miguel who has begun packing the garments into boxes. Cutler knows exactly how to undo a corset and I catch myself grinning as my lungs fill, wondering how many fine ladies he's ruined.

I think I should make some clothes. Just simple outfits that don't require a team of engineers to lace up. Some sun dresses would be nice. And pants are a necessity. Some shorts because summer is coming up. Shirts will be a problem though. I dropped out of a college fashion course after I learned to tailor pants. I was never that good, but my stitches usually held. I've half-finished a lot of things.

Once I am in only the shift I hold my hand out to Cutler for my clothes. And to appease him, I cross haughtily to the changing screen. "I think we should buy some extra fabric for me to work with, I can make some pants and shorts for, you know, practical wear, instead of having to be a walking curtain, like it's gonna take some time to get used to... Cutler?" I call out uncertainly when I hear no reply only to be shushed. Cutler speaks in low Spanish to Miguel, I assume negotiating the price of bulk cloth.

"What kind of fabric?" Cutler asks me grudgingly.

Miguel has the lot of boxes under his arm and Cutler holds the door open for me. "Can we look for that guitar now? Miguel do you know where to find one?" After hearing the translation Miguel nods happily and points us into the heart of the market here we see an explosion of shades of brown and gray on the people, reds, blues and yellows just about everywhere else.

"We'll wait here for a cab," he tells me evenly, I nod and soon try to pick up where we left off.

"Getting back to our discussion: if shame is a mechanism to discourage bad behaviour, why doesn't it? Deep down, some people are just out to be gross or hurtful and shame will do nothing to stop them."

"Yes that's true, some men drift into bad behaviour and it becomes habit. So shame does not help them."

"Then it doesn't stop you from doing anything you're told you shouldn't do."

"Not directly. Good behaviour is a choice, just like bad. It all depends on the innate character of a man, really. No amount of instilled shame can stop a bad man from bad deeds any more than any lack of shame will stop a good man from good deeds."

"So if it's just as easy to make that choice with or without shame, what is it there for?"

Cutler opens his mouth but I can tell he has no retort. "Why were you asking again? You seem to know what it is now, at any rate."

"Oh, I was just fucking with you," I reveal with disinterest. "Of course I know what shame is – doesn't mean I have any, doesn't mean I need any. And now that you see how needless it is maybe you'd be better off without it too."

"Was there anything else?"

"No, that's all." For this exercise, I have earned a pointed laugh from Cutler, as if I have somehow wasted his time.

Eventually a horse driven cab passes our way. We clamber into the open-topped carriage and play Tetris with all the boxes.

We explore the place in silence now and head back into the heart of the marketplace. Cutler kindly purchases me a guitar that looks as if it's been shrunk and stretched, but I guess that is the accepted style and as long as I can play it I am happy.

"We should get some extra strings too." He doesn't have any extra strings. "Shit. Well I'll just play gently then. What are they made of?"

"Sheep intestines." Cutler tells me mildly although I can't stop my brow from folding unpleasantly.

"Gnarly."

Cutler pays the man and asks about the Chinese merchant (who apparently speaks Spanish) and we are directed deeper into the maze of bodies and smells. The Chinese merchant has a great big smile on his face. I ask for rice paper; he nods vigorously and shows me a wicker box that is filled to the brim with the thin pale paper. Cutler pays for this as well.

The horses begin to pull us out of the market. In the same second as my ass hits the seat my fingers find their way to the frets, playing the first thing that comes to mind. Which happens to be the Alice's Restaurant riff.

Cutler is undeterred by this and cautions me, "To the general public, we will have to lie about your age."

"Why?"

"Twenty-four and unwed? No one shall look twice at you with any sort of interest. The main problem is explaining... well everything. We need to think of something plausible enough that no one will doubt it and outlandish enough that it explains everything." He studies me with cold calculation. "You should be able to pass for eighteen, I think. I just hope your tan will fade in time. It is a tan, isn't it? You're not half-bred, are you?" I admit, the last week in Australia have left me with a wicked tan (all over, before you ask) but my racial handicap is pure bred Euro trash. Hungarian, German, Czech, Polish, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss and a splash of Icelandic.

My patience is wrecked but the dynamic combination of Cutler's fear-mongering and the lightness of the guitar sound is holding my disposition in one piece. Cutler continues to visually eviscerate me while I simply raise an eyebrow and answer flatly, "You'll just have to wait and see." There is a blue vein in his temple that is making its presence well known. This is too much fun to be legal.

"You're making it infinitely more difficult than I thought it would be to pass you off as civilized." Oh irony, bathe me in your glorious shower of grey. "I knew this was going to be a difficult task, but I didn't realize you would be tattooed and unpolished."

"I didn't plan on this either."

We exit the cab when we reach the harbour. The boy I tipped earlier races up and offers to carry the boxes onboard for me, and I thank him "thanks kiddo." Cutler hands him a few small, ugly coins and he races off, and the driver gets his due as well.

The ship is still mostly lifeless, my guess is we won't set sail for another hour. The crew is probably thoroughly scattered through the town by now.

Two boys are carrying the boxes onboard and I'm positive no one asked them to do so. I scan the dual staircases that lead to the upper deck and see that my pet plant is sitting on the bottom step. I am worried not just for the plants' survival but if it is doused in chemicals. This is a very real possibility, so in a surprisingly rational decision, I conclude that I will take seeds from this plant and grow a new female clone so that I can be sure I am not smoking mercury and piss. I snatch it up in one hand before anyone knocks it over and carry it and my new guitar to safety inside my little cell at the back of Cutler's office.

Cutler isn't paying me the slightest heed as he supervises the two porter boys packing the boxes away into a trunk. He pays them and they're off like the wind.

And I'm bored already. "For the sake of keeping me occupied are there any good books on this hulk?"

He motions to the far wall where a low cabinet sits stoutly. "There are a few books that I've collected over the years although I haven't had the time to read as many of them as I'd like. Feel free to browse them but let me warn you, there might be nothing there to your liking."

I open the doors and trace the spines with delicate strokes. "Afraid I might learn something?" He's right though, a solid majority of the books are navigational guides and star charts and economic textbooks and sales logs, but with the slightest of smiles I gingerly remove _Alexander_ by Plutarch. I entertain myself by feeling the worn out cover, worn from use, and sit on my cot, getting the full value of the window. The light hits the book _perfectly_ and it's incredibly satisfying.

Cutler takes moment after moment to inspect me, my mannerisms and the way my eyes absorb every word like a sponge. An illuminating grin passes by my face, giddiness crawling higher up a beach like waves of pure water. I ask myself how many times I think Cutler has read this particular book, perhaps learning valuable lessons in acquisition from Alexander the Great. The real madness of the situation is that I only ever read the classics online and now that the internet doesn't exist I have a hard copy in my hands.

A fourth little boy, red-haired and freckled, appears in the room, but it turns out that he works on the ship and isn't just hoping for porter work.

"Gerald, I shall have my tea now since we're not moving. Leigh? Will you have some as well?"

"Sure, thanks." The kid nods and runs off. Minutes later he bustles through the doors with a fair-sized circular table, then leaves and reappears a second time with two dining chairs, all dark and highly polished. A third time he runs off, returning with a laden tray on wheels and a white table cloth. He arranges everything without a word and disappears a fourth and final time.

"Won't you sit?" He pulls one of the chairs out for me. I sit blindly and thank him in a weak voice. The china is a calm combination of blue and white, and a small, half wheel of white cheese is on a plate next to some crisp bread and olives.

I watch in sinister adulation at the total lack of error in Cutler's actions as he pours his tea and fills it with one – two uncompromising spoons of sugar and one precise splash of milk. It irks me deeply when I watch someone that clearly has no room in their life for even the smallest mess, it feels like a blade on strings. I drink my tea plain because I can't stomach picking up that damn sugar spoon.

"May I ask you a rather personal question?" Cutler asks after a few minutes.

"Fire 'way," I urge him, eager for distraction.

"Do you believe in God?"

I could drag this on and on by preying on the assumption that he is referring to one god in particular, as opposed to the other thousands with names that are harder to pronounce. "No."

"Why not?"

"I put away my security blanket a long time ago. Yourself?"

"I lend my name to the winning side, that doesn't mean I have to put much faith in it."

"That's the smartest thing to do. You're living in a world dominated by a barbaric religion. You can't get away from it but you can use it to your advantage, just like it does with it's flock of sheep."

"That's a rather impressive conclusion. But I have another question. You must know more of the Earth's history than I do, only because they find more every day, bones and artifacts buried underground, and such. Have any new theories come about?"

I smile without much emotion and Cutler pales slightly, unsure of what to expect. "Do you want me to explain it all? Right from the beginning?"

"Do you know all that?" he wonders in anticipation, wearing a plain mask that is barely enough to hold back his fear.

"The universe and everything in it formed about fourteen billion years ago after a super massive explosion we've named the Big Bang. It wasn't an explosion in the technical sense because that requires combustion which requires oxygen, of which there was none yet, so we technically don't know what banged but for all intents and purposes that's what it was. The atoms spread by the explosion began to cool, very slowly, and began to form into the elements that we know, mostly hydrogen and carbon. For about ten billion years it was total chaos. The four Jovian planets, the gas giants, are speculated to be failed stars. The four terrestrial planets formed from errant asteroids, last I heard. Earth was still a ball of molten rock when it got hit by a big asteroid and knocked a chunk of it off, which became our moon."

"The moon was a part of the Earth once?"

"It's made of the same kind of rock and it's all the same age. It makes sense. When the Earth cooled water formed, but it was still covered in volcanoes – very _active_ volcanoes. Those two forces working together created the land – by the lava cooling into landmasses – and the water surrounding it. Then... I guess you could draw a comparison of what happened next to what happened before. When it cooled, things began to form, bacteria mostly. But then they evolved and got bigger, they evolved into fish and amphibians mostly, life started in the water.

"Nothing grew on land at this point, it was close to uninhabitable. Amphibians started crawling onto land to breed, I think, and some evolved that way, halfway between land and water. Animal life moved that way, from water to land, plants grew, the climate started to even out. Then it was the age of the reptiles, giant reptiles called dinosaurs which were the coolest things ever. The last great extinction was about sixty five million years ago, I think, when a comet hit the Earth, the ash in the atmosphere blocked out the sun and caused an ice age, and when the ice melted it came to the age of mammals. Us."

Cutler is smiling in bemused wonder, I can hardly believe it. "Are you sure?" he blurts out, delighted and incredulous.

I laugh in sudden good-humour. "Pretty sure." I'm slightly confused as to how late it is until I glance out the window, where the sun is low, right in my eyes. "It's late eh?" A diminutive signal bell rings behind me in Cutler's hand.

"Must be nearly supper time. Will you stay and eat, or is your appetite still lost?" Yesterday I'd have refused him in any case, tonight, in spite of myself, I'm feeling so much better at the thought of a longer conversation with a real live human with opinions and a sense of dark humour.

"Can't say if I'm hungry for the food or the conversation but I'll have a little of both." We exchange glances and smile as the little boy Gerald finds his way inside to attend.

"Bring us something fresh, and find the Lieutenant and tell him to get us moving."

Cutler rises contentedly, crossing to his desk. There isn't a contradicting thought in my head as I cross to my own little nook where my guitar is lying. There's a song I once heard called Engine by a band called Neutral Milk Hotel. With a name as pretentious as that how could they sound any good, right? Dead wrong. When I start to play, it's the only thing in the universe that matters.

Voices drift behind me, as my forehead is pressed to the cold glass window. Adult voices other than the one I've been listening to all day. The world isn't enough for me to stop playing now.

"Come eat something." He doesn't seem to mind that I've been solely occupied in my head for the last while. With the gentle smile on him, I wouldn't think he'd have a problem with me at all.

"Pretty sure," Cutler scoffs, quietly roused. "Quite a succinct way of accounting for the ultimate mysteries of the universe. I'm tenuously grateful at your willingness to indulge me."

"I'm being indulged too. I think it's good for me." Right now my thinking is that I can use him as a bouncing point or something; I might be able to get some talking therapy points to lighten the load on my subconscious.

"If that's the case then indulge us both: what did you mean when you said amphibians evolved?"

"Evolution is the principle of change over time. Lots of time. Starting with single-celled organisms that gradually multiply and become exponentially more complex. We evolved from apes, did you know that?" Sorry, Darwin. Cutler laughs with excruciating condescension. I should have known, there is no way he would believe that so readily. At least not until I explain it in greater detail. I think I'm unconsciously making it a personal mission to strip his system of beliefs to to the bare bones from sheer boredom and frustration. "I wonder sometimes exactly how we got from tracing our hands on cave walls to capitalism and genocide. It seems like such a drastic change for just thirty thousand years."

"Thirty thousand years is a long time," he remarks solemnly. My change in tone has rendered his eyes downcast and his face soft. His hands are clasped loosely on the table between us. "Long enough for us to find our place on Earth."

"Y'know I don't like that kinda language. We're not obligated to stay in our place, whatever it may be. That's just an arbitrary starting position, it's where we go that matters."

"How cheerful! You're a living contradiction. One moment the world is full of suffering and in the next the sun shines again." So the sun will shine on my suffering. What difference does it make? "I suppose such an attitude makes sense, it's not as if you have anywhere else to go."

"Pretty much. I'm still waiting on that moon colony. Shame we can't just do what the Europeans did when they came to North America. Woulda been so much quicker on the uptake."

"Now you're sounding like a sanitarium again."

"We've _been_ to the moon. People have stepped foot there. And their footprints will stay there undisturbed because the moon has no atmosphere." Cutler says nothing, trying and failing to maintain a cool facade. "No moon people or nothing." No monoliths either.

"Moon people..." he repeats blankly, then shakes his head right out of its stupor. "No, that's preposterous. We fought against the men there like we would against any other invading army."

"You _were_ the invading army-! Fuck, I'm not inna condition to go there now, but let it be known that wars are fought between two armies." My skull is about to boil over in dead sarcasm. "But no, no you're right. Genocide and war, two totally different branches of ethics. My mistake. It would be too easy, don't you think?"

That diamond cut lizard tongue of his rounds his lips before he attempts to defuse me. "Retreating from that point for a moment, who _else_ has walked _where_ in the time that I've missed?"

"We've sent astronauts to the moon and we've sent mechanical probes and satellites to all the planets. There's a mechanical rover on Mars called Curiosity that studies the landscape and the chemical composition and takes pictures. It took samples of the soil there and determined that Mars may have sustained life at one point and is still life-sustaining. But – don't get too excited – when I say "life" I don't necessarily mean highly evolved life, multi-cellular bacteria, at best. But life is life. And there's Voyager, a satellite that was launched thirty odd years ago and only recently made it to the edge of our solar system, but it's got enough momentum to carry it forever. There's some drawings on it of how to find Earth and who we are in case any aliens should find it, which I think is a really bad idea."

"Why do you say that? I think it's just the opposite. Look at yourself, you're practically an alien and look how much I stand to gain from you." I'm taken aback at his naivete. Who ever said I was a good person?

"Imagine meeting a race capable of interstellar space travel, probably equipped with weapons equivalent to that level of technology that doesn't think much of us. Think about the first time Europeans went to the Americas. They brought guns, didn't they? They brought guns and a bad attitude and they stole and raped and killed in the name of their fucking king and country. Just sit on this for a while: anything you have to gain or lose because of me depends _entirely_ on me. I don't want to make waves Cutler, but I want you to keep in mind the only reason we're working so well together is because we can both benefit from each other. Imagine that I came here of my own free will, with resources of my own and I didn't _need_ you. What in the world could stop me?"

"Stop you from doing what exactly?"

"Does it matter?"

"Then you are human, after all. Afflicted with the Hobbesian syndrome, I should add, as I certainly don't feel that we are at war with each other."

"I like Hobbes because he was right but he still missed the mark. He perfectly explained one side of human nature, but completely ignored all the others. We're in that state of total war sometimes, when it benefits us most, but not always. His philosophy is too narrow but we are large and contain multitudes. If there's anyone like us out there, I hope we stay alone. Isolated, where we can minimize the damage."

"We're naturally destructive?"

"Sure, I get a kick out of it sometimes. I don't feel like that all the time."

"You would still call yourself destructive when the mood strikes." I shrug and nod, not feeling talkative anymore. "Indeed we are in a constant state of war, if not with each other then with nature, with God, with ourselves." Thunderstruck, I realize he's got a damn good point.

"That seems a lot closer to the mark. You're onto something." The surest sign that intelligent life exists in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

"Let me ask you another question. Would you say we are intelligent through our own devices, divinely intelligent through God's declaration, or something else?"

I take my time finding the right words, I want him to know what I really, really think. "We're lucky to have the chance to become intelligent at all. Dig this - Earth is the right distance away from the sun so that it doesn't get too hot or cold, on average. Earth has an atmosphere and fresh water and vegetation. Our moon draws away most meteors from hitting Earth directly. The solar system is far enough away from other solar systems so that any neighbouring super novas are too far from us. Our solar system is on the outer edge of an arm of the Milky Way, our galaxy."

My muscles jolt at the same time. The proof is in the sky, and it's dark enough now. "_That_ long faint streak of stars across the sky is our neighbourhood, seen in cross-section, from the inside. In the centre of the Milky Way it's theorized there is a super massive black hole, the final form of arbitrary destruction. If we were too close we wouldn't be here to speculate. We're isolated enough to be protected and close enough to explore. We seem to have hit the perfect Goldilocks zone. So lucky it's impossible to calculate the odds of us being so lucky. And to me, the gentle indifference of the universe is infinitely more comforting than any benevolent watchful eye."

Cutler smiles gently. "That, most assuredly, is not what I was expecting to hear. He tilts his head admirably. "You have very much to say don't you... I am deeply impressed, Leigh, you show great intelligence for a woman." All this explaining of fundamental concepts has cut my fuse dangerously short.

"Does that mean I'm objectively smart? Or am I just smarter than the average piece of furniture?"

Cutler is vaguely put off by this, unsure how exactly to respond to my sudden hostility, "There is no need to be offended, I was merely saying-"

"I know what you were saying Cutler, don't talk down to me. If you really meant what you just said then at least give me that respect and talk to me like a person."

"I do apologize. Sincerely. It's just so difficult for me to accept what you've told me. If you know so much else than you must know how confounding it is to suddenly change your perspective at a moment's notice. Can't you understand that?"

"Yeah. But I'm right." Cutler eyes me disdainfully. "Sorry," I grin. "I fully admit that I'm taking total advantage of the situation, but I can't help it. It's too tempting."

"That's why you must resist temptation in order to overcome it. Be stronger than temptation."

My grin turns inward. "The only sure way to eliminate temptation is to yield. Do you have any fire?" He smirks as he rises and glides to his desk. After some searching he provides me with a box of nicely cut matches.

I immediately set to work cutting a long thin strip off of the rice paper. I never liked short and stubby cigarettes, I was the elegant ultra slim menthol kinda girl in high school. Granted, I'm not into menthols anymore but the style and the attitude of the ultra-slim stuck with me. I take a moment to watch the nauseating precision he writes with, before I set fire to a match, illuminating the disgust on my face.

"Smoke that out the window, for pity's sake."

Happy to hear that my window opens I eagerly oblige. "It really opens!" I exclaim, thrilled to the bones.

I hear him laughing, and his ledgers can't be that entertaining. "What's the joke?"

"I'm just musing on your choice of necessities. A guitar and a plant."

"Don't make fun. We all have our coping mechanisms."

Immediately blood rushes through my brain, I get a head rush of the purple and blurry variety, remembering the taste of popcorn and charcoal filters. I lie back against the wall, feeling the salt breeze over my face and hands. I might have melted right through to the floor if the headrush hadn't cleared in time.

"May I try one of those?"

"I'll roll you one in a minute."

"I've always thought of smoking as more of a lower class habit, of course that's not true but the way to go about it with the pipe gives it that look. These have a look of elegance to them."

I start to laugh. I can't help it. It's too perfect. "Would you exchange all that you could smoke for your health and money?"

"Are you mad? They're not all that special Leigh, where would you get such a thought?"

"Oh, nowhere special."

Eventually, when the rush of images has passed I roll another cigarette for Cutler. Speech is loose now, the dam has broken. "I know so many useless things. Completely inane trivia. Your ear lobes line up with your nipples. Your foot is the same length as your forearm. Your thumb is the same length as your nose."

"Do they all have to do with the human body?"

"No, but those are always the first ones I think of. You can lead a cow upstairs but not down. If a shark swims upside down it goes into a coma. If you keep a goldfish in a dark room it'll eventually turn white. Porcupines float in water. Women blink twice as much as men and out hearts beat twice as fast. On average, right handed people live longer than left handed people by nine years."

"That's strange. I wonder if that applies to me."

"Well it either does or it doesn't. Are you right or left handed?" Puzzled, I look at his hands to see which one takes the finished product from me.

He takes it in his left and lights a match expertly with his right. "No, you see I am dextrosinistral."

"... Is that like ambidextrous?"

"Not quite; it means I was born left handed but taught proficiency with my right hand."

"...Just for fun?"

"Because being left handed is a sign of the devil."

"Sometimes I forget the kind of weird shit people believe in. Can you still use your left hand?"

He jumps to answer cheerfully, "Oh yes. In that way it worked out rather well, for the small price of having the devil in me."

"See," I begin very disparagingly. "when you say things like that you're only being disrespectful to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And he will rain down on you with his noodly appendage."

"What's the point?" Cutler huffs, tired of me already.

"That's the point. The church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is satire which is perfect because it's considered a real, bonafide religion. It's like making a satire out of the satire."

"Why are you so eager to prey on religion?"

"Because it's the weakest of the pack. And at the moment, survival is my only concern. Convenience is a close, close second."

"You would almost rather die than be inconvenienced?"

"Yesterday I was on a plane going around the world in fourteen hours. The greatest risk being falling out of the sky for whatever reason and crashing. So yes."

But he isn't listening to my lamentations, he is absorbed in something I said. "Fourteen hours? Impossible."

"Ever been surprised before? Flight was one of those accidental discoveries. All the best ones are. Electricity, LSD, scatting." Don't do them all at once.

"I don't even know what to say... It's been eight months since I've been home."

"Eight months!"

"Yes. Really it's just over three months each way, but we were docked for some time in Cape Town."

"On this floating crate?"

"Well I am dreadfully sorry that it doesn't meet your expectations, but this floating crate is the fastest mode of trans-continental travel to date."

"No shit eh?"

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Fire away."

"If you don't want to be married, what will you do with the rest of your life?"

"Anything I want."

"Excuse me for saying this, but I think you're over simplifying things."

"You only think that because you're used to over complicating things. Don't feel bad, most people do."

"How is it that you can be so nonchalantly radical? Was that how you were raised, or was that something you picked up along the way?"

"I'm not really, you're just used to a different perception. Still, a little radical thought goes a long way."

"I confess, I'm relieved you said thought and not action." Don't breathe that sigh of relief just yet. What good is thoughtless action? It's just as useless as wishful thinking. "But tell me, do you feel that you yourself are radical?"

"Not usually. I might feel radical sometimes, but nothing ever comes of it. I'm cursed with twenty-first century laziness."

_i hurried through this one a little much, and did a little-stage editing_

_thoughts?_

_xoxo_


End file.
